Reduced Infanticide Hypothesis
This hypothesis suggests the adaptive advantage for females who had hidden estrus would be a reduction in the possibility of infanticide by males, as they would be unable to selectively kill their rivals’ offspring. This hypothesis shows support in the recent studies on wild Hanuman langurs that display concealed ovulation and frequent matings with males outside their fertile ovulatory period. Heistermann et al. hypothesize that concealed ovulation is used by females to confuse paternity and thus reduce infanticide. He explains since males determine paternity and thus decide on whether to kill the female’s child based on his previous matings with that female, a female’s promiscuous matings in conjunction with concealed ovulation would lead a male to believe there is still a possibility for that child to be his own.
Read more about this topic: Concealed Ovulation
Famous quotes containing the words reduced and/or hypothesis:
“Narrowed-down by her early editors and anthologists, reduced to quaintness or spinsterish oddity by many of her commentators, sentimentalized, fallen-in-love with like some gnomic Garbo, still unread in the breadth and depth of her full range of work, she was, and is, a wonder to me when I try to imagine myself into that mind.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)